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Forum:Survivors after reapers
Hi there. I have a question: How many survivors do you think were there left after resolving the Reapers threat? In game, they speak about millions dying (on Earth) and so on. By looking on the state of the ruined cities and the sheer number of Reaper forces it seems that populations were reduced from billions to millions. It seems to me that surviving races can easily become prey to "untouched" races which are about to invent space travel. So, do you think that there can be a "rennaisance" of the old races or will they go into decline? I guess that depends on how many survived and on which ending it happened.--Mike Gilbert 13:16, August 23, 2014 (UTC) Well it's widely documented in game that many of the colonies of the main races had been left untouched as the Reapers focused on the population centers and the war didn't last for a long time (only a few weeks at most) meaning it's unlikely any of them will go extinct or into decline. The only race that will most likely disappear are the Batarians as they didn't have many colonies due to conflict with Human interests and had withdrawn from Council Space. --Apache287 (talk) 09:32, August 24, 2014 (UTC) :Yeah, maybe, but I think that joining the Allies helps them sooth out their problems to a degree.--Mike Gilbert 13:26, August 24, 2014 (UTC) Regarding the Batarians, it's also important to remember that they were the first hit by the Reapers, meaning they faced combat longer than anyone else. It is likely the Batarians would go extinct, or at least into decline, but none of the other major races (Asari, Turian, human, etc...) would be at risk.--WaffleKing110 (talk) 19:23, August 26, 2014 (UTC) The reapers attack only races advanced enough to spaceflight. That means yagh, raloi and drells on Rakhana remain untouched. I meantion drell, because 11 billions were left to die on their homeworld, when only tens of thounads drell were taken on Kahje. Drells didn't develop spaceflight before hanars discovered and uplifted some of them. That gives Rakhana drells chance to survive long enough to continue their civil war due to overpopulation, victors of this war will evolve in next 50 millenia and compete with yaghs for galactic domination.FirstDrellSpectre (talk) 09:22, August 27, 2014 (UTC) I'd say billions were killed, between the various worlds hit, possibly more than ten billion, but probably not into the tens of billions... and the galaxy, as it exists in Shepards time, has trillions of lives. As someone pointed out, regardless of side quests and tours of the Citadel, ME3 basically takes a few weeks. I'd approximate that the Reapers haven't even killed 1% of sentient life in the galaxy (which is still more dead... IN A FEW WEEKS... than the combined total of all the humans who've ever lived). The Raloi might've been successful in letting the current harvest pass them by, and in-game conversation indicates that the Reapers left the Yagh alone, but the Drell likely took a hit. We already know Kahje was a target, and while Shepard can save the planetary defense network... well, Earth, Palaven, and Thessia had planetary defense networks. I think we can assume the Reapers plowed in, and I suspect that the Drell, themselves, would not have let the Hanar get wiped out while playing the "we're not space-faring" card to save themselves. They'd've joined in the fight and they probably took some heavy losses... and their entire race was only in the hundreds of thousands... That said, though, I think the discussion is missing the big picture. Let's look at the Prothean-era harvest... it's pretty clear that the Reapers didn't leave "technically-pre-spaceflight-but-almost-there" cultures live. Asari of Shepard's era are the most advanced race in the current galaxy, and they're only a few thousand years (at most) ahead of humans... meaning, for the last harvest, Asari were only a few thousand years ahead of 50,000-years-ago humans. Think of where humans were 50,000 years ago. We're talking "use of fire as a tool", but no use of metal tools, no understanding of agriculture, no writing. The Asari were being taught agriculture and literacy by the Protheans, but that's about it. That's where your culture had to be to be left alone by the Reapers. We have many explicit comments that the Reapers spent hundreds of years wiping all traces of themselves and the Prothean-era cultures from the galaxy, so I think the same would hold true for Raloi and Yagh. Sure, the pre-spaceflight races were being left alone in the big fighting, because why bother? But that would mean the Raloi and Drell, who are pretty much human-equivalent in cultural and technological development, would get 50,000 years to plan, KNOWING the Reapers were coming again. The Reapers didn't give anyone that advantage last time - I suspect they weren't going to this time, either. Once all the spaceflight-level races were done, pre-spaceflight cultures would get mopped up almost as an afterthought. By the time the Reapers leave the galaxy, anyone much past "figuring out agricultural systems" is gone. Had Shepard not succeeded, it would have been up to the Pyjaks, next time around! --Zbg97 (talk) 22:27, August 31, 2014 (UTC) :Also you have the timescale of the Reaper War all wrong - many things in game from codexes to dialogue hint that the game takes place over a significant portion of time. In Priority: Earth it is stated that it has been months since Shepard left Earth, and the conflict between the quarians and geth has also been raging for months before you arrive at Rannoch. It's more likely that ME3's timescale is closer to ten months to a year, especially as the Prothean extinction took place over centuries, and that was with a surprise attack at the Citadel. Javik states that our races are putting up a tremendous fight however, suggesting our cycle is lasting longer than the Protheans did at this point. As a result it is likely that the homeworlds have suffered the most casualties, although the endings (good ones anyway) show that they are not beyond repair, and that many colonies have been barely touched. After all in Mass Effect 3, not counting the multiplayer or DLC, of all the planets visited by Shepard the Reapers themselves are only present on eight of them, and five of them are Homeworlds. Garhdo (talk) 14:26, September 1, 2014 (UTC) ::Small note: during the geth/quarian scuffle Admiral Hackett says, "We only lost Earth a few weeks back." A couple of months could well be expressed as weeks for effect and emphasis, but if it was a question of many months, using "weeks" wouldn't make much sense. Elseweyr talk • 15:25:51, 2014-09-01 (UTC) :::There is another thing. Prothean VI Vendetta said the current cycle is going to an end, when Vigil said that the cycle last centuries.FirstDrellSpectre (talk) 15:35, September 1, 2014 (UTC) @Zbg97, I wrote Drells on Rakhana would survive, not drells on Kahje. Only few precent of population of the desert planet was taken for the waterworld. The rest of drells are keft to die on their homeworld.FirstDrellSpectre (talk) 15:35, September 1, 2014 (UTC)